One Story of Nikola Tesla

Our lives today are dependent upon a bewildering amount of technology,
much of which we take for granted. Indeed, some of that technology is so
pervasive that we forget it even is technology.

Perhaps that's one reason why so many have forgotten the name of
Serbian-born inventor Nikola Tesla.

Tesla endured a frightening number of injustices during his lifetime.
Let me tell you a story about Tesla, one of his inventions, and his
extraordinary generosity, in hopes that he will not face the additional
injustice of being forgotten by history.

In the distribution of electricity, alternating current has distinct
advantages over direct current. Levels of voltage and current can be
readily transformed with AC, allowing distribution of power over distances
of hundreds of miles. DC power, on the other hand, is difficult to
distribute in usable levels more than two miles between generator and user.

This was already well-known in the 1880s. Direct current, however, was
still the predominant type of power being installed at the time. The
reason, simply put, was that nobody had yet figured out how to build
reliable AC motors and equipment. AC devices in use at the time used
"commutators" - mechanical current-switchers - to operate,
and frequently failed due to heat, vibration, and an excess of moving
parts.

Some scientists and inventors had been trying for years to find
solutions to these problems. Other inventors and financiers, who had
invested in DC power systems, weren't interested in solutions. DC
power was firmly under their financial control, and they saw anything
that challenged DC not as an improvement, but as a threat.

Nikola Tesla, then twenty-eight, had recently been forced to give
up his studies at the Austrian Polytechnic School in Graz due to lack
of funds. In his studies there he had taken special interest in AC
devices, and the flaws inherant in their design had returned to his
thoughts often during the years.

One day in 1882, while talking to a friend in a Belgrade park,
Tesla abruptly froze in mid-step and mid-sentence. A new concept
of AC equipment, long forming in the background of his thoughts,
had suddenly crystallized in his mind. His friend wanted to help
him to a bench to sit down, but Tesla refused to relax until he had
traced a drawing of a new AC motor design in the sand.

Six years later Tesla would present the drawing again, this time
in an address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.
Far more than just a new motor, it was an entirely new principle for
handling AC power, a "new scientific principle of stunning
simplicity and utility", which was to sweep the world.

Those six years, however, proved to be difficult ones.

"Tesla came over from Graz and went to work for Thomas Edison.
Edison couldn't stand Tesla for several reasons. One was that Tesla
showed up for work every day in formal dress - morning coat, spats,
top hat and gloves - and this just wasn't the American Way at the
time. Edison also hated Tesla because Tesla invented so many things
while wearing these clothes."-Laurie Anderson,
"Dance of Electricity", United States part 1

Thomas Alva Edison did not fully understand the light bulbs that
he himself had invented. Though the carbon filaments would work from
AC or DC current equally well, Edison himself believed his electric
lights would only work with DC. It was to be years before he learned
of his error. In any event, when Tesla first arrived in America in 1884,
Edison had a large vested interest - both financial and emotional - in
the DC power plants which he had been building, and which the "robber
baron" J. Pierpont Morgan had been financing.

When Tesla arrived in the United States and sought Edison's backing
for his new AC devices, therefore, Edison refused to listen.

"Hold up! Spare me that nonsense. It's dangerous. We're set up
for direct current in America. People like it, and it's all I'll ever
fool with."

Nonetheless Edison offered him a job, promising Tesla fifty thousand
dollars if Tesla could redesign Edison's breakdown-prone DC generator
designs. Tesla agreed and worked for the better part of a year redesigning
the dynamos, also adding new automatic controls of Tesla's own design.
The new generator designs were a vast improvement over Edison's originals.
Upon completing the job Tesla went to Edison to collect the $50,000
promised for the task.

Tesla soon found himself unemployed, and for a time he worked as a
laborer on a New York street gang to keep from starving. In time, however,
he was fortunate enough to find a financial backer for his AC work. Soon he
was able to apply for patents for his polyphase AC motors, distribution
systems, and transformers. Word of the extraordinary patents reached the
academic world, and so it came to pass that the inventor was invited to lecture
before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Tesla's presentation and
ideas were lauded at the time as remarkably new, lucid, thorough, and
far-reaching in ramifications, and were discussed widely by engineers. So
it was that Tesla came to the attention of business magnate George Westinghouse.

Westinghouse already understood the advantages of AC electricity, and
had been one of its' early advocates. He had dreamed of someday being able
to provide electricity throughout the country, but the technology to do
so reliably had not yet existed. Learning of Tesla's successes, Westinghouse
had found what he needed to make that dream a reality.

Westinghouse soon purchased the patents to Tesla's polyphase AC systems,
and hired Tesla as a consultant as well. Westinghouse then began to develop
AC systems across the country, systems which are now in use throughout the
entire world.

The agreements between Westinghouse and Tesla called for the businessman
to pay the inventor a royalty of two dollars and fifty cents - for every
horsepower of AC equipment sold. Even a century ago, the royalties
would be enough to make Tesla one of the wealthiest men in the world.
(Were such royalties to be paid on equipment in use today, the royalties
on AC generators alone would be worth more than seven and a half
billion dollars.)

Dogs and cats began disappearing from the neighborhood around Edison's
laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey.

Unable to challenge AC electricity on technical merits, Edison turned to
using scare tactics instead. "Just as certain as death [AC power] will
kill a customer within six months," he declared. Leaflets about the
dangers of AC current were printed and distributed. Lobbying efforts were
made in New York State to limit legal levels of electricity to 800 volts,
making AC distribution impractical "as a matter of public safety".
Perhaps most horrifying, though, were Edison's weekend demonstrations of the
dangers of Tesla's work. Taking one of the frightened pets stolen from the
streets of West Orange, Edison would place it on a sheet of metal, bring
forth two wires attached to an AC generator, and announce to spectators,
"Ladies and gentlemen, I shall now demonstrate the effects of AC
current on this dog."

Edison's efforts to discredit AC electricity were, in the long run,
unsuccessful. This did not, however, make Edison's lies or killings any
less repugnant.

The race was on between Morgan and Westinghouse to detemine who would
control the future of electricity in America. Morgan didn't care what kind
of electricity was used, as long as he was in control of it - and he
controlled Edison's DC patents. Westinghouse retained his faith that AC was
the superior and more cost-effective system, and should be used for that
reason, if no other.

One of Morgan's managers, Charles Coffin, proudly boasted of his tactics
to gain ground for Morgan and Consolidated Edison (later to become General
Electric). He described raising the price of Edison-built streetlights from
$6.00 to $8.00, specifically to raise an extra $2 per streetlight to pay off
local politicians. He also advocated getting generators and distribution
systems installed quickly, the advantage being that "the users willingly
pay our price [for power in the future] as they cannot afford to change the
system."

Westinghouse made it clear that he and Coffin did not share their style
of doing business.

The House of Morgan therefore went after Westinghouse in a different manner,
spreading rumors to Wall Street investors that Westinghouse's finances were
unstable. Investors began to shy away from providing Westinghouse with new
capital, capital being the lifeblood of his efforts to implement AC. Eventually
it became clear that, if AC and the Westinghouse business were to survive,
the remarkable royalty contract between Westinghouse and Tesla would have to
be drastically altered.

Westinghouse came to Tesla and described the situation. Tesla replied with
these words:

"Mr. Westinghouse, you have been my friend, you believed in me when
others had no faith; you were brave enough to go ahead... when others
lacked courage; you supported me when even your own engineers lacked
vision... you have stood by me as a friend...

"Here is your contract, and here is my contract. I will tear both
of them to pieces, and you will no longer have any troubles from my royalties.
Is that sufficient?"

The advantages of AC power, and the strength of Tesla's ingenious designs,
soon made the difference. AC installations rapidly overtook DC, and Tesla's
designs are now the standard used throughout the world.

The name of Nikola Tesla, however, is now largely unknown. He is rarely
given credit for the vast variety of his inventions. Certainly he was not
given sufficient reward for the benefits he gave us all freely; Tesla died
in a New York hotel room, nearly penniless, in 1943.

Nikola Tesla was a pioneer in a staggering number of fields; AC power
was only one of them. He has also done significant research and development
in a wide variety of other disciplines, and his body of patents ranges
through such diverse fields as robotics, wireless communications, turbines,
fluid dynamics, radar, therapeutic equipment, VTOL aircraft, artificial
lighting, X-rays, and computer systems.
Though history books continue to give Guglielmo Marconi credit for the
invention of radio, Tesla's lectures on wireless broadcasting precede
Marconi's radio patents by some three years. The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled on the matter in Tesla's favor, and struck down Marconi's patent
claim, in 1943.
The developers of integrated circuits for modern computers have been
surprised to discover that some of the basic logic gates they desired
to implement and patent on silicon had already been implemented
and patented, by Tesla, in 1903, using AC-based components.
Many of Tesla's experiments, such as his artificial creation of ball
lightning, still baffle scientists today. It still remains to be seen
what other scientific advances were anticipated by Tesla over a
century ago.

Much more about Tesla has been written than this. A look at Bogdan
Kosanovic's Nikola
Tesla site would be a good place to start. As well, the following
books are worth reading:

Tesla: Man Out Of Time by Margaret Cheney. A very thorough
biography, which I recommend highly. It's also the source for most of
the quotes on this page.

Prodigal Genius by John J. O'Neill. Also a very good
biography. Not as thoroughly documented or as objective as Cheney's
book, but more rich in narrative detail.

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla. It only goes as far as 1919,
and doesn't have the historical perspective of the above works, but
it has the obvious advantage of being Tesla's own words.

Though not directly related to Tesla, The Robber Barons
by Matthew Josephson describes the cutthroat economics Tesla and
other inventors of his time had to deal with.

"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the
human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the
brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep,
friends, love, everything." - Nikola Tesla